OpenAlex has opened a community consultation on the future of its open access classification. Sharing here for information, as the outcome may affect how diamond content is described in OpenAlex data!
The OpenAlex Community Advisory Board’s working group has published a report recommending a move away from the current colour labels (gold, green, hybrid, bronze, closed), which have been used since 2018 by Unpaywall and then OpenAlex. The report identifies four main issues: the current colour labels were designed for journal articles and fit other outputs poorly, they rely on journal-level policy rather than the status of the work itself, they conflate access with business model, and they offer no sense of change over time.
As an alternative, it proposes describing each work along three separate dimensions: access (free to read or closed), location (publisher or another platform) and licence (open, restrictive or unidentified). These would produce labels such as “Publisher Open”, “Platform Public” or “Closed”. Business models (APCs, diamond, subscribe-to-open, etc.) are deliberately left out, with a separate venue-level taxonomy recommended.
OpenAlex is asking for feedback on three points: whether the problems resonate, whether the three-dimension approach makes sense, and what would be needed to adopt it. Given that these classifications feed into funder dashboards, institutional reports and national monitors, this seems a useful opportunity for the diamond community to share its views, particularly on how diamond journals and their content would be represented.
The form takes about five minutes and is open until Friday 13 November 2026.